The Digital and Electrical Engineering Core,consisting of a full-time Coordinator and a part-time Database Programmer/Manager, is designed to provide a new service to assist center investigators in the following ways: (1)The identification and recruitment of participants, (2) Management of contacts with participants in existing studies, and (3) Provide training in human subjects and act as a liaison between investigators, the local in stitutional review board (IRB) and human subject consortiums. Most of the investigations affiliated with the center study human participants, including carefully specified clinical samples. There is currently a great deal of duplicated effort in this activity stream, that could be more efficiently and more effectively provided via a centralized system provided by the Core. The greater efficiency will enhance the productivity of research underway, and the centralized support services will facilitate cross-disciplinary collaborative research by managing a ready-made pool of families or individuals that have already been nvolved in center-related research, and could be incorporated into future investigations in a collaborative research design. The training in human subjectsis essential in today's research world of rapidly evolving policies, standards and best practices in human participant protections. A centralized mechanism for providing on going information and standard practices across investigators will further enhance the efficiency of ongoing studies.